Barnard School - Kayaking Trails

Barnard School - Kayaking Trails

The Barnard School for Boys was a college prep-school founded in 1886 by William Livingston Hazen.
In 1920, Barnard moved to 246th Street and Cayuga Avenue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx of New York City, in the private, upper-class neighborhood of Fieldston, where grades 1 to 12 were in the main building, while the kindergarten was in a separate, smaller building called the Cottage School.
It merged with the Horace Mann School in 1972, which first opened its doors in a small building on University Place in Greenwich Village in 1887. Both eventually moved to Riverdale (Horace Mann, 1914 Barnard, 1920) and were situated as neighbors separated by a dell and a wide tree lined street.
Unlike most Prep Schools which started at the 7th or 9th grades, Barnard was K-12.
Barnard was an unusual combination of a formal, classic English-style curriculum, with the ambiance, interaction, and demeanor of progressive education. It was also unusual in that by the 1950s the religious composition of the school was about one-third each of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish. Barnard was a small school with only 25-40 students in each grade. Individual instructors typically had only 10-15 students in each classroom.
There were no elective classes other than the choice of a second language. Latin, the first language, was compulsory for all students starting in the 7th grade – very unusual for the 1950s. Students could elect Spanish or French as their second language. Four years of mathematics were compulsory as was Chemistry and Physics. By the 1960s Latin was no longer compulsory and students had the option of taking Chemistry, Physics or Biology.
Progressive education principles governed the curriculum of the school following the educational philosophy of Carrington Raymond, a long time Headmaster of the school. There were no school uniforms which were so typical of prep schools in that era. The boys did not even have to wear dress shirts and ties, other than on Fridays for assemblies, then a controversial relaxing of the traditional demeanor of prep school students. Student first names were used by other students and often even teachers instead of the more formal "Mr." which was then almost universal. By the 1960s students were required to wear dress shirts, ties, and jackets every day. Teachers were almost always addressed as "sir" or "madame."
The school newspaper was the Purple B. The yearbook was the Barnard Bric.